For a franchise that’s existed for 14 years, spawned 29 feature films and a raft of episodic streaming exclusives, not to mention the entire slate of shows put out by the defunct Marvel Television division, or even Netflix’s roster of street-level stories, Kevin Feige has done a remarkable job of ensuring that his Marvel Cinematic Universe has never played too hard, fast, and/or loose with what’s regarded as official canon.
Obviously, there are plenty of things that longtime fans of the franchise will disagree with, and the canonical status of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. ranks highly among them, but for the most part everyone is on board with the official timeline, continuity, and mythological nuts and bolts put in place since Iron Man kicked things off back in the summer of 2008.
However, Redditors have been revealing which indisputable elements and aspects of the MCU they absolutely will not acknowledge or embrace under any circumstances, with Iman Vellani and Feige’s opposing viewpoints on the 616 timeline setting things up for an interesting debate.
The general consensus is that anything Sony does that doesn’t directly involve Tom Holland’s Spider-Man should be ignored, which is fair enough when Morbius came packing a pair of the worst post-credits scenes in history. Similarly, the can of worms regarding the remuneration of the Avengers has been reopened, with many fans happy to simply accept that Earth’s Mightiest Heroes get paid… somehow.
It might be incredibly nitpicky, but at the end of the day, it’s still intriguing to see just how much MCU minutiae people will not embrace under any circumstances, even though they know it’s canon.